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OLYMPICS
Aug 2, 2004

Kobayashi smashes Japan record

Two-time national champion Fumikazu Kobayashi broke the Japanese record Saturday in the men's 1,500 meters with a 3 minute, 37.42 second showing at an international athletics competition in Belgium, Japanese athletics officials said Sunday.
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2004

Priorities at Camp Cropper

Somewhere near Baghdad International Airport is a U.S.-run prison with the stern designation "High Value Detention Site" and the jaunty name of Camp Cropper. It was in the news last week following reports of a visit by Iraq's new minister for human rights, Bakhtiar Amin, to the prison's most highly valued...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 1, 2004

Atmospheres that transcend time

KAWASE HASUI: The Complete Woodblock Prints, by Kendall H. Brown, with essays by Amy Reigle Newland and Shoichiro Watanabe. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, two volumes, 550 pp., 700 color illus., 2002, $265.00 (cloth). Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), sometimes deemed "the foremost 20th-century Japanese landscape...
COMMENTARY
Aug 1, 2004

Mideast role challenges EU

PARIS -- France and Germany no longer make the law in Brussels. In spite of a long fight, they failed to get their Belgian candidate elected to head the European Commission and could only accept the appointment of Jose Durao Barroso, who, as prime minister of Portugal, backed U.S. intervention in Iraq....
EDITORIALS
Jul 31, 2004

Winning battles, losing wars

The war against terror has forced governments to rethink national security. Protecting against invisible, anonymous threats requires extraordinary vigilance and exceptional measures. Ultimately, victory in this battle will rest on a broad consensus on what we are fighting for; only then can governments...
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2004

UFJ says no to tieup with Sumitomo group

The saga over struggling UFJ Holdings Inc. took a new twist Friday when its estranged peer, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., Japan's second-biggest banking group, asked it to enter into merger talks.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2004

CPI declines for 58th month, indicating deflation ongoing

The key gauge of consumer prices in Tokyo fell 0.1 percent in July on a year-on-year basis, marking a record 58th straight month of decline, the government said Friday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 30, 2004

How green is my Happy Valley

While Tokyo is unbearably hot and humid in the heat of the summer, in Karuizawa verdant grass and moss carpet the floors of forests and the mountain air is perfumed with the scent of larch leaves and wild flowers. The area is a little over a one-hour train ride from Tokyo, enabling visitors to quickly...
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2004

Drawing the line with China

NEW DELHI -- India and China have held regular border-related negotiations since 1981 in the longest such process between two nations since the end of World War II. Yet, after 23 years of negotiations, the two Asian giants have not achieved the bare minimum -- a mutually defined line of control separating...
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

Accused deserter Jenkins reassigned to the U.S. forces based in Japan

The United States has reassigned accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins to the U.S. forces based in Japan from South Korea, where he was posted when he apparently defected to North Korea in 1965, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2004

The sustainable whaling option

I t has been just 100 years since Norway began hunting whales in the Antarctic seas, but celebration seems hardly warranted. The International Whaling Commission is effectively paralyzed because its 57 members, split almost equally between prowhaling and antiwhaling nations, are unable to assemble a...
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

UFJ fights to keep MTFG merger hopes alive

UFJ Holdings Inc. said Wednesday it has filed an appeal against a court order to suspend its merger negotiations with Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc., stressing it plans to go ahead with the merger.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jul 29, 2004

The Morlocks are coming!

MOSCOW -- The most common word used by foreigners to describe Soviet Russia was "gray." Be it the cityscape, clothes or official culture, everything looked evenly unpleasant, unexciting, drab. Nowadays, the maddening communist evenness is gone, but Russia has become home to something equally disturbing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

Prosecutors drop NPA shooting case

An ex-cop and three others with Aum Shinrikyo ties who were arrested earlier this month over the 1995 shooting of the National Police Agency chief were released Wednesday after prosecutors gave up on charging them due to lack of evidence.
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

Accused deserter Jenkins reassigned to the U.S. forces based in Japan

The United States has reassigned accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins to the U.S. forces based in Japan from South Korea, where he was posted when he apparently defected to North Korea in 1965, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Wednesday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Jul 29, 2004

Old-school fun and honor

OK, I'll admit it again, I am a sucker for well-made old-style games. The "Metal Slug" series is not especially old, but I love the way it has refused to adapt to the brave new world of 3-D gaming.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 28, 2004

Something for your head

Animators have always had a thing for Surrealism, going back to Disney's "Silly Symphonies" in 1934 and beyond. (Disney, in fact, collaborated with the most notorious Surrealist of all, Salvador Dali, on 1946's fabled "Destino" project.) Japanese animators, however, are the arch Surrealists of the movie...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 28, 2004

Women on the verge of adoption

Casa de los babys Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: John Sayles Running time: 95 minutes Language: English/Spanish Opens July 31 [See Japan Times movie listings] Gender roles are becoming increasingly fuzzy, even in Hollywood. As women go all out for traditionally male stuff (murderous...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2004

Bangladeshi seeks vindication over al-Qaeda link accusation

A Bangladeshi man held by police for alleged connections with al-Qaeda but later released with no charges filed against him made a tearful plea Tuesday for vindication.
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2004

Japan set to aid A-bomb survivors in North Korea

Japan plans to support North Korean survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, health minister Chikara Sakaguchi said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 28, 2004

Docu-dramas protest war in Iraq

When U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly said last week that Article 9 of Japan's war-renouncing Constitution "is becoming an obstacle to strengthening the Japan-United States alliance," nobody, let alone the mass media in Japan, seemed to be too shocked.
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2004

U.S. withdraws bulk of realignment of armed forces proposals

The United States has withdrawn most of its specific proposals for the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, Japanese government officials said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 28, 2004

Pioneering painters surveyed in Shizuoka

Painting landscapes with oils in the open air has now become a universally recognized practice, but it was not always so. "The Romantic Prospect: Plein Air Painters 1780-1850" currently running at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art -- deals with a period in which painters famously started to go outdoors...
JAPAN
Jul 27, 2004

Police honored on 50th anniversary

The government held a ceremony Monday to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the current police system and the national police chief pledged to restore public safety.
JAPAN
Jul 27, 2004

Japan tested chemical weapon on Aussie POW: new evidence

The Imperial Japanese Army tested cyanide gas on Australian and Dutch East Indies prisoners of war in 1944 in Indonesia's Kai Islands, according to a document recently uncovered by a Japanese researcher.

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly